Early birds - annoying or admirable?

Mis Hooz sent me an interesting piece from Sunday's New York Times about people who wake up very early and brag about the fact they get so much done because they sleep so little. I think there's definitely a tendency to look down on anyone who sleeps in until noon - especially during the work week. (Unless you're on a college campus, where people give you weird looks when you say you wake up most days at 6 am, and 9 am on weekends.)

I know I've definitely bought into that mentality. If I'm not up by 9 am, I feel like I'm wasting the day. (And as many of you may have noticed, a good percentage of my blog entries are posted before 8 am during the week.) Even when I was on vacation, I pushed myself out of bed early.

But I don't know which category I fit into anymore - am I a morning person or night person? Before going back to school, I would've called myself a morning person. I preferred to go into work early. But as my stay at Iowa has worn on, I find myself keeping later hours. Scheduling has a lot to do with that, of course. I began by taking early classes as often as I could. But as many of my classes are now later in the afternoon and evening, I've had to adjust. Now, waking up early is painful most days. And I find I get more done later at night.

So where do you stand, people? Are you morning or night people? Do you favor lots of sleep with late waking hours or are you one of those freakos who can get by on 4-5 hours of sleep and hit the gym at 5 am?